About

Hello and thank you for your interest in Finding Felix. The project was launched with support from Stanford University, Freie Universität Berlin and the Berlin Film Festival's Generation section. The resulting work will serve as informative entertainment for audiences of all ages and as a resource for filmmakers, educators, festival programmers and more. More of the interviews are viewable here: www.findingfelixproject.blogspot.com

We have so far:

30 + indepth qualitative interviews

12 expert interviews

2 test screenings for audience feedback

90 minute roughcut

Music secured

To finish, we need:

Film Clips

Final Edit

Post-Production Sound and Image Perfection

Subtitles

First phase post-production Promotion.

Ask anyone what their first film memory is. It's likely they can quite easily access the memory and tell you. This is evidence of the impact of the event memory. At film festivals for young audiences like the Berlin Film Festival's Generation, there is a lot of first film memory-making with foreign films-- shown in their original languages, framed with knowledgeable introductions and valuable discussions afterward. How might memories of films like these impact the life built upon them?

Very much like travel, foreign cinema offers sensory imprints of the world's languages, stories, aesthetics, culture and landscapes. Seen in childhood, these memories become a part of the Autobiographic Memory foundation, offering cornerstones to which like-memories connect as we construct our personal histories. With further exposure, these memories can develop into worldly instincts.

After collecting over ten years of insight as a producer and presenter of motion pictures for young audiences for the Mill Valley, Chicago Children's International, The San Francisco International Film Festivals and Screen 360: Films For Children of the World, further evidence to illustrate value seemed still needed. Through immersion into this question at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and initial testing with the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, I recognized that illustrating the vividness of these film memories through qualitative interviews will reveal what Stanford professor Scott Bukatman said, "a stone left unturned for innovating how young audiences learn." So with support from Stanford, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Berlinale Generation section, I went looking for Felix, an impressively genuine eleven year-old whom I had met while serving on the 2001 Kinderfilmfest international jury, ten years after that first meeting.

What was so impressive about Felix? I met Felix and his family each day when I showed up to do my job on the international jury. He engaged me in conversation in English, his third language. I found him unusually calm and engaged, especially for an eleven year-old. Most of all, he seemed to have a sense that he was experiencing something great. Felix became my emblematic representation of the benefits of foreign films for a developing mind. How did these memories impact the person he has become?

This year, the Berlinale children and youth section is 37 years old. That makes for a large potential of the young Berliner population to have an international film or two in their memories. Not only Felix helps us illustrate this story. Several others: former young journalists and jury members whose childhoods were filled with days at the Berlinale reveal their memories and their potential impacts. The memory makers: festival directors and the filmmakers both reveal the connection of their work to their memories and those of their audiences.

David B. Pillemer's research on Autobiographical Memory, especially his Momentous Events, Vivid Memories, connected. Film memories could offer a directive memory, like Brian Rink's who took an inspirational cue from his film memories and acted upon it - setting his life on a particular course. For some, we know a great film memory can be completely directive and produce the next actor, director or composer; but for others, the memory can be implicit, and subtly influence their lives. In any case, Dr. Pillemer points out the Distinctiveness Hypothesis: an international film exposes us to something different, something distinctive and thereby is more likely to be memorable. David Rubin of Duke University and Tillmann Habermas of Goethe Universität Frankfurt also contributed to the research. It is the aspiration of this project to show the wealth of cinema made for young audiences as a simple, accessible solution for bringing the "world school" to those who can't get out to it and to show the easily accessible opportunity to plant cornerstone memories of distinctiveness which could resonate within a developing mind for a lifetime, with vivid surprising outcomes.

A magical note about our music: I met our soundtrack composer and producer, Tim Blok, by chance in a Suriname take-out joint in Amsterdam. He played me "Mister Money", I pushed the video start button on my laptop -- as if it were a scene from an Elvis flick-- and we both said, "Yeah, uh huh, that works." Thanks for the magic, Tim! www.3rdfloormagic.com

Many Thanks to Tina Töpfel, Gintare Malinauskaita, Daniel Scheimberg and the Berlinale Generation team for their support of FINDING FELIX!

Should FINDING FELIX not accomplish its funding goal through Kickstarter, please consider contributing through our fiscal sponsor,cinefemme.netRewards will be honored.

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Our budget is available upon request.

Here are some of our younger respondents from the John F. Kennedy School Berlin, a bilingual K-12 school, which regularly attends the children and youth section at the Berlinale.

Three years later, four classmates consider the same film:

Below on SoundCloud is an interview with Katy Kavanaugh, Shawn Bowman, writer/producer Phillip Pelletier and singer Heather Christie on KBOO radio with Crystal Leighty in Portland, Oregon.

Risks and challenges

One of the items in our request for support with film finishing is to license film clips and present them along with our interviews in the most delightful way to engage a general audience. Some clips will be harder to come by so we might have to reconsider participation and lose a few favorites. We'll work within the constructs of fair-use and offer a fair and equal fee to the rights holders. Our post-production finishing is based on estimates from two Berlin production companies with upstanding reputations in the community of being fair and supportive.

One reshoot session is in our finishing budget to re-capture the skyped interviews live. One has already been completed. Several of the research psychologists whose work supported this project will be at an international conference at the Center for Autobiographical Memory at the University of Aarhus, Denmark in July and another subject is also in Denmark, making the reshoots economical. If we don't get funding, the skype sessions will remain in a balanced aesthetic.

Sound settings in the beginning of the project were a challenge. You might detect a single sound channel in some of the clips in the video above. Nevertheless, our sound quality (as was picture) at our test screening in a 240 seat cinema at Kino Arsenal at Potsdamerplatz, Berlin was excellent. Editor Daniel Scheimberg (b. Colorado, USA) did what he knows how to do within FinalCut and the 90 mins played balanced in surround sound. I did the editing above--pros would do the final.

First phase post-production promotion is the next hurdle. The budget line item in this Kickstarter campaign is for film festival submission screeners, postage, film festival screen copies, promotion. Festival presence will dictate the type of release (theatrical, institutional, public television, etc.) and further determine acceptance and further distribution budgeting. FINDING FELIX seeks a world sales agent who specializes in institutional sales. If that doesn't happen, darn it, we'll collect addresses and take mail orders, so make sure to take note of our contact information.

Risks and Challenges in presenting a story developed from research findings involving the nebulous human memory? There could be hundreds, of course. But when the ultimate truth of the human memory holds the most value, then the challenge becomes that of any artist: revealing the most potent minimum. In this case, the journey to cut through so much fine qualitative memory recollection is the greatest challenge and will ultimately make me a better storyteller. If I cannot eliminate the "little darlings" and reveal a clear, compelling, and repeatable story, that is the risk that will drive me make it....because I would like to be trusted to tell more worthy stories in the future.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $25 or more
About $25

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall. And we'll send you an original Finding Felix postcard from Berlin, perhaps to make a fresh memory of a place you've yet to visit.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $50 or more
About $50

Films from the Berlinale Generation program from the Berlinale Edition on codefree DVD. See first hand some of the fine quality productions seen at the Berlinale's children and youth section, Generation.

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $100 or more
About $100

Receive a copy of the completed FINDING FELIX.

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall.

Pledge $250 or more
About $250

An incredible complete list of films, select photos, quotes, awards and memories from the first 25 years of the Berlinale's children and youth section, Kinderfilmfest. An invaluable tool for building your knowledge of films for young audiences.

And a copy fo the completed Finding Felix.

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall.
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Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $500 or more
About $500

A signed copy of "Momentous Events, Vivid Memories" by David Pillemer, EdD. Dr. Pillemer's valuable research in autobiographical memory greatly substantiated the Finding Felix story. His research findings and personal accounts are presented in a writing style intended not just for the academic--a compelling read about a fascinating topic that affects us all.
And a copy of the completed Finding Felix.

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,000 or more
About $1,000

You're a Film Memory Clip backer. Your or your group's name will appear in the documentary credits, online and printed collateral material attached to the film memory clip you select to sponsor.
You will receive a signed copy of "Blicke, Begegnungen, Berührungen"
(Moments, Meetings, Emotions)
25 Years of the Kinderfilmfest.
And a copy of the completed Finding Felix.

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll highlight it on the Film Memory Wall.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $2,500 or more
About $2,500

Scheduled skype discussion with director Katy Kavanaugh and one of three memory researchers about Autobiographical Memory for your publication, presentation or personal interest.
And a copy of the completed Finding Felix.

What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll highlight it on the Memory Wall. We'll include yours or your group's name in collateral material and in film credits.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $5,000 or more
About $5,000

Presentation of FINDING FELIX at your home/business/ institution along with installation of the Memory Wall. Director's live presence to be arranged.
You are included in a Memory Badge on the Memory Wall and you/your group or institution and its activities are presented as sponsors.
And a copy of the completed Finding Felix.
What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $10,000
About $10,000

You're an Executive Producer. You and your company/institution will receive credit in all forms, vocal/print/screen, as such. Katy Kavanaugh will personally present FINDING FELIX, install the Memory Wall at your home/business/institution for a defined time.

Signed copies of "Momentous Events, Vivid Memories" and "Blicke, Begenungen, Berührungen-25 years of the Kinderfilmfest" coming your way.
And a copy of the completed Finding Felix.
What's your earliest memory of a foreign language film? Send your answer with your digital photo...and/or a digital photo of you at the time the memory was made and we'll include it in the Film Memory Wall. Your or your group name will appear in all collateral material, online banner art, DVD covers, posters and in film credits as Executive Producer.